Takeshi Tornier

As one of the last remaining large-scale development areas in the inner city of Hamburg, the Domplatz receives a “hybrid“ building which will host a central library, a political forum and an archeological centre.

The development of the “Hafen City“ district will soon strenghen the North-South movement, which will be crossing the new Domplatz. The “hybrid“ building will be positioned in a way, that people from the inner city can either pass the building using the topography or continously move into the inner parts of the library.

Libraries are trying to come up with a new identity or understanding of a public institution. Traditionally being a location for storing and studying books, the design aims to extend the library definition with the reading experience. The reader becomes a customer, the experience of information consume and communication are becoming important issues. The separation of the media-storage and the media-study was the main conceptual idea, which offered a new “flexibility“. This flexibility allowed that the media space could be densified with more media without expanding into the reading zones. Common libraries tend to strangle themselves with growing media volumes.

Within the design the media is located in a new back-wall of the Domplatz inside of a rationally organized volume. In front of this volume an organic and transparent second volume is floating above the plaza. It hosts all reading experience facilities.

The circulation through the building functions as a rotating movement that strives through the media-storage and leads to areas such as reading landscapes, surfpools etc. in the front volume. Information search and reading are taking place intuitively, all movements are made up of resting and passing by.

The “browsing“ path ultimately ends on the upper two floors hosting the archeological centre. 

---

SCHUNCK cannot guarantee the correctness of content and expression. The participants themselves are responsible for their entries. The copyright of the projects underlies to the authors, any reproduction or use of the shown material is strictly forbidden.